bar, union, bookbinder fan club

did i talk about olive kitteridge already? i think i did but let me say one more time: i loved it. richard jenkins and frances mcdormand are excellent and the scenery and production design…was so…on point. i’m going to read it, TODAY. also today i made a pizza dough, a pie dough (my first pie dough, blueberry pie to be made tomorrow?), and rice krispie treats, and it rained, and i held a baby for two hours, and i bought a pair of prescription computer glasses online for $28. are they made by slaves, i hope not.

gave up cookies and candy for lent. day one and i’m dying and already drank chocolate milk in substitution. will chocolate milk become my new vice. actually will milk become my new vice. also what else. taking that wild oat flower essence, and i think it’s working? could it be? not technically any closer to knowing my passion but at least feeling very cheerful, though also have been eating a lot of cookies (pre-lent). also whomever said “use your credit card for everything to earn miles” was a FOOL! (a wise fool)

Oprah wants us all to live our Best Lives — but as encouraging as she is, do we really know what Oprah’s own best Best Life moment has been? Was it the day she started her own television network, OWN? Is it any day she checks her balance at an ATM? Maybe it’s when she takes one of her beloved bubble baths with the lavender oils she found while antiquing in Provence?

No, she reveals while interviewing Selma star Carmen Ejogo for Violet Grey. Her best moment ever is far cozier:

Well, the best night of my life was actually recently. It was pouring rain. I had a fire and the dogs were here and Stedman was in his office and I was curled up on a sofa reading the most exquisite book. I had a hundred and twenty-some pages to go and I just looked around the room and thought, “I am so happy. I mean, god, I am so happy! I hope it rains all night or at least until I finish this book!”

from this great interview with kathleen hanna, who is on my oprah/PDX awesomeness level:

11. What would your last meal be?

KH: Oh my god! I totally know that, I was just talking about this. Okay. There’s this restaurant called Heartland Brewery, which is kind of a touristy restaurant. Me and my husband and our friend Cey did this event at MOMA one time, and it was like, we had 20 people with us and we all wanted to go out to eat, but every restaurant was so tiny it couldn’t fit us. So we ended up going to Heartland Brewery. They have like 30 beers on tap or whatever, and it’s that kind of place, but that was the only place that could fit us. And they have this thing there that is an egg roll that’s stuffed with basically buffalo wings, buffalo chicken, and then you get bleu cheese dressing. My fantasy is that I would have one of those that was as big as a meatloaf as my deathbed food. It would look like a meatloaf or one of those round cakes, and then the frosting would be the bleu cheese dressing.

In the spirit of the exercise, we do our best to order the same dishes at their normal inflated prices. I think my brain function is declining; matching items from the menu on my phone to the one in front of me is exceedingly difficult. I can’t find the Light Blackberry Margarita, so I order something called a Pink Punk Cosmo because they both sort of have colors in their names and sound like something a Bratz doll would drink. I get carded by the manager (I’m 30 and look it), but this is less surprising than how the primary component of the Pink Punk Cosmo is cotton candy, over which the waiter pours vodka and cranberry juice.

There’s not a lot of ways you can go off script at a fast food joint, but ordering a Yumbo, 10 chicken nuggets, and nothing else still apparently warrants a side eye from the cashier. “Are you sure you want that?” she asks. My friend told me a story once about waiting on line at Chipotle behind a guy who requested a bowl of meat with sour cream. The server kept trying to convince him to add other items until finally the customer said, “I think I’ve made myself clear.”